Let's Play Pokemon Shining Pearl, Part 4 - Underground Secrets

Again, there's just a long gauntlet of trainers and exploration to do at this point, which is something that I admit to have missed in a lot of the more recent games with its mentality of 'map space is a valuable asset'. Admittedly, the walk down from Veilstone down to Pastoria is hampered a bit by the fact that there's really not a lot of variety in either wild or trainer Pokemon, something that I think is a bit more pronounced in Diamond & Pearl due to its smaller Pokemon pool compared to how I experienced Sinnoh the first time around, Platinum. 

There are a couple of other stuff on the way which makes this a bit less boring. The Ruin Maniac's Cave is here, and good ol' Ruin Maniac is going on digging through the cave. Turns out last time I was in Solaceon, I was just... completely goofing up and missed the little pathway that led to the eastern side of Solaceon and down into the Unown caves. The Ruin Maniac's Cave expands the more Unown variants I catch, which I thought was a nice way to incorporate the Unown into a sidequest. I've always thought that having all these Pokemon variations -- Unown and Vivillon being the major ones, but there are a lot of others in recent memory -- and not having anyone in-game really acknowledge them in any way is kind of a missed opportunity, so this is nice. Not quite as cool as Legends Arceus and its Unown hunt in the overworld, but this is nice. 

There's technically a fork in the road several times, but Generation IV is quite blatant in its roadblocks. A bunch of scientists associated with Team Galactic (or duped by them, as later dialogue implies) blocks the way to Lake Valor; and there's a blackout in Sunyshore and guards stop me from going there. M'kay. 

I reach the resort area on the southern part of the map, which is a nice bit -- the restaurant with repeatable battles is still here, although I honestly don't think I need to grind with my hideously overleveled team. I've actually been rotating out two members that are overleveled throughout this gauntlet just so I don't overshot the game's original level curve. 

At this point, I decide to explore the Grand Underground a bit more, and it's honestly a nice thing to do mindlessly running around as I listen to a podcast or something. The original Underground is itself kind of a more passive, more 'brainless' gameplay, just running around and excavating things on walls. It's nice, but not the most engaging. So having rooms with overworld Pokemon walking around is really nice. And there are some rooms at the ends, with one having a giant carved Bastiodon statue... I feel a fair chunk of effort went into the environmental backgrounds of these underground chambers, with the lava one looking particularly spiffy. I really just wished they had put this kind of effort in updating and be a bit bolder in changing the overworld. 

They've added a bunch of little mechanics, with NPCs underground that I can talk to -- they don't say anything important, but they count towards the infamously frustrating way of triggering Spiritomb to activate, which was not easy to do in the days of old-school Nintendo DS. I had to talk with the same guy like 40 times or something stupid, disconnecting and reconnecting our DS-es! It's nice. There's also a bunch of Digletts that randomly pop up, filling up a 0/40 meter. Initially I thought the Digletts were the ones that would count towards Spiritomb, but the Digletts are part of a Ultra Space style shiny encounter increase mechanic. Okay! That's neat.

More interestingly, they also use the Grand Underground as a way to make it so much easier to encounter more frustrating Pokemon to encounter. Hippopotas, who IIRC would only spawn in the Ruin Maniac's Cave after a certain amount of Unown has been caught, show up in the Grand Underground. Glameow and Purugly are also here; I remembered them locked off in a post-game area? More importantly, though, Munchlax shows up! Anyone that's tried to catch a Munchlax in the original Nintendo DS games knows what's up, these bastards that only show up on specific honey trees with a 1% chance or something? Yeah. I do like putting some effort into catching my rare Pokemon, but I can admit Munchlax was stupid to get back in the day. 

Anyway, I manage to fill up several more pages of my Pokedex throughout this little sojourn through the Grand Underground as well as the Hearthome-Solaceon-Veilstone-Pastoria run. But out of the dozen or so Pokemon I've captured, I've figured out who I want for my team member, finally rounding up my party to six... Skorupi! I've always loved the little scorpion bugger. Drapion's never been my favourite designs, but it's a cool bug and one that I feel works nicely -- and is a fair bit more of a one-trick pony than my go-to Generation IV bugs Vespiquen and the poor, underpowered Kricketune. 

I enter Pastoria City, which is fine and as laid-back as I remembered it to be. I didn't realize the epic Croagunk photo panel was a Platinum addition, though that's fine. The city itself doesn't really have a whole ton to it, since it's mainly revolving around the Great Marsh. I feel the Grand Marsh itself is mostly the same, and... again, not a whole lot of surprises there. The icky mud traps are still there, the four areas and the telescopes are still there...

I just feel that, again, I sound a bit like a broken record, the Great Marsh kind of sucks in Diamond and Pearl. There are so many Pokemon that repeated from the previous areas, and even super-early-route Pokemon like Starly and Bidoof still show up here. Platinum's Great Marsh introduced a lot of new faces like Yanma and Tangela straight out of the get-go, and right now it's just basically a way for me to go in, catch like a Wooper and a Marill, and get out. With the much longer loading time for a Pokemon encounter in the remakes, it is kind of a miserable experience. 

What I did get, though, was another partner, which means that I can put Jirachi into semi-retirement since I did say I wanted to play with an entirely Generation-IV team... Croagunk! I love the vibe of this frog punk, and I've never actually used a Toxicroak in my team ever. It does mean that once Skorupi evolves into Drapion I'm doubling up on Dark-types, but that's okay. The game honestly does feel really easy.

Which means that my current party is: Torterra, Drifblim, Gastrodon, Croagunk, Skorupi and Crobat; with Jirachi on reserve. Crobat might also join Jirachi in semi-retirement, but I haven't really thought of a Pokemon to swap him out with. 

Pastoria City is also home to the move relearner. The modern games have been great at having the 'level 0' moves be instantly learnt as a Pokemon evolves, like Crobat's Cross Poison, but one thing that remains a delightful move relearner thing? Torterra's Wood Hammer. STAB Double-Edge, baby! 

With that done, I go into Crasher Wake's gym, which has a water-level puzzle. I don't have much to say about the puzzle, I think it's perfectly nicely done, even if it does feel a bit samey with some gyms that rotate around with buttons from the GBA/DS era. It's nice, though. Of course, having a grass starter (and being, y'know, kind of overleveled), Torterra single-handedly swept the gym trainers in the gym. And at least unlike Maylene, Crasher Wake does have a fair amount of trainers!

Crasher Wake himself is.... is okay. Again, I do have an advantage with a grass-type starter, but as the fourth gym leader that comes off a long grinding road, he's only got a Quagsire, Gyarados and a Floatzel, and the only real surprise was an Ice Fang from the Gyarados... but there's really not much to mention here. Wake himself is nowhere as bombastic as his anime or manga counterparts, other than the design being 'surprise, a wrestler!' I feel like I'm nitpicking, though. Pastoria's a perfectly fine gym. 

After that, though, the very suspicious Team Galactic member standing outside the Great Marsh starts acting shifty and suspicious, before he runs off, and this leads us to a rather lame duck-chase as he runs to the entrance of Pastoria, across the beach, and all the way to Lake Valor. He refuses to fight us, which would've been a cute subversion of the Pokemon formula... except he eventually does. So, eh? I felt this could've been a bit more interesting with him having grunt friends to help us out. But he passed off his package, which is totally a fuck-ton of dynamites, to his commander. And the scientists who think Team Galactic is a legit company is still closing off Lake Valor under the name of nebulous research. Honestly, kind of a bit of a letdown of a sequence. 

Oh, right, a Barry rival fight happens at this point. I actually had to look through my notes to realize this, but honestly, while the Monferno is understandable due to remake level scaling issues, his Starly isn't. No, seriously, Blue at least had a Pidgeotto at this point! May had a Pelipper! This is the fourth gym, the mid-point of the game technically, and his party has a Buizel and a Starly, completely unevolved. Yep, Barry, you suck. 

Anyway, in front of the scientists, Cynthia gives me the Secret Potion to solve the Psyduck blockade, which would've felt random if I didn't find Psyducks having a headache so charming. I just really wished that there was more that I did to solve this blockade beyond the pretty champion showing up and tossing the plot device to me. 

Anyway, after I cleared out the Psyduck, Cynthia shows up and immediately gives me another plot coupon, the Old Charm, to take to Celestic Town. The route to get there is foggy, but the HMs are now stored on the Poketch and the fog just... it does end up feeling like a relic of a past game now. It's just a button press to get rid of the annoyance, and Defog is one of those things that you don't actually experience until after you've had the solution, so it isn't even a proper roadblock like Rock Smash or Strength are in this game. Anyway, we get another gauntlet, and I did actually like this part of the game having a bit more variety in its trainers and Pokemon. Some Ninja Boys, a bunch more new Pokemon like Croagunks and Kadabras show up...

(My own Croagunk evolved into Toxicroak at this point, which I've always found to be cool with the wrist-spikes). 

Anyway, I arrive in Celestic Town. It's much smaller and a lot less grandiose than the incarnation we saw in Legends: Arceus, but that game honestly does such a great job at expanding the Sinnoh mythos to actually feel like the epic storyline crafted by these background NPCs. And there always a lot of great bits strewn around even this original Diamond/Pearl script, with the talk about Azelf, Uxie and Mesprit... I just don't necessarily think the original game was that good in spotlighting the three fairy guardians in general. Both the anime and manga, with their respective three main characters, were a lot better in this regard. 

Anyway, an 'angry spaceman' is ranting in front of the Celestic Town Shrine, which is made up of murals of Dialga and Palkia; and a drawing of the three Lake Guardians around a red stone in its middle. I come down and beat up the Galactic Grunt, who buggers off and mutters about the 'Galactic Bomb'. Cynthia's Grandmother gives some background about the Lake Guardian origins, before Cyrus finally shows up and gives a whole spiel about us having to look at the world from a much wider scale, and that for a new world to be born, some destruction must happen. Yep, yep, obvious villain right here!

Anyway, I beat up the trainers West of Celestic Town, but the part of Mt. Coronet that it connects to is blocked by Strength. Meanwhile, Cynthia's Grandmother advises me to go to Canalave Town, but I need to get Surf to go there... which is an excuse to go back to Hearthome and fight Fantina! ...and it is a detour that feels rather arbitrary, since there's absolutely no story at all in Hearthome at this point. Nothing about Team Galactic, nothing about Cynthia, nothing even about Barry. It's no wonder that Platinum, again, just ripped off the band-aid and had Fantina be the third gym instead the moment you enter Hearthome. It really does feel like they wanted a 'the Viridian/Petalburg Gym is here, but it's not open yet!' moment but there's no real satisfying reason for Fantina to delay our gym battle other than a shrug. She is a diva enough to do it, yeah, but the Fantina we see at the gym has so little dialogue it doesn't really matter.

It's also the first time I've seen the Diamond/Pearl version of the Hearthome Gym. And... I know I'm a huge proponent of Platinum, but while Platinum's Hearthome revamp isn't the best (it's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game with flashlights, I think), the original one is just straight-up bad. It's a Cinnabar Island style 'quiz room' gauntlet, except with mathematics instead of something actually on-brand for Pokemon... or even for Fantina! She's a dancing ghost-lady whose whole point is that she's a diva that loves Pokemon Contests. You're telling me that her idea of a gym is... a maths quiz? Hello? 

Fantina herself is a bit more formidable than the pushover Maylene and Wake, though I also think that's because I burned the PP on some of my Pokemon through her trainers, and all the Drifloons have Aftermath. Fantina has a Drifblim, Gengar and Mismagius, and the first two do aim to cripple my party with Confuse Rays and Will-o-the-Wisps. I did lose my own Drifblim due to stubbornness in trying to fight ghosts with ghosts, but that's okay. 

With Fantina done and five badges under the belt, time to go to the Western side of Sinnoh next in Canalave, which we'll get to... next time! 

Random Notes:

• Tinkering around with the different walking Pokemon, I find out that good ol' Torterra, very naturally, is... extremely slow. As befits a giant tortoise that's carrying a bonsai garden on his back. 
  
• Diglett being part of the Grand Underground makes absolute sense, although I find it funny since Diglett was never part of the Diamond/Pearl dex. Not even the Platinum one! 
• Crasher Wake's outfit is based on Swampert. Those fins on his head, the colours, and most importantly the black 'muscle' things on his pants. Swampert does not appear in Diamond and Pearl, but Swampert is also one of my favourite Pokemon, like, ever. Have I never realized this about Crasher Wake? Huh! 
• I also hatched the egg from Hearthome, which is a Happiny. Did I remember the identity of the egg? I think I wasn't sure if it was a Togepi or not. 
• I did have some fun with my Gastrodon's Storm Drain ability in the Pastoria gym, tossing Gastrodon into battle to absorb Water-type moves and then annihilating the enemy with Ancient Power. 
• Defog and Fly are done by a Straraptor, but everything else is done by good ol' Bidoof and Bibarel, everyone's favourite HM Slaves. 
• I do appreciate basically every single one of the trainers under Fantina's employ lampshading how easy the questions are and how I'm definitely going into the wrong rooms to fight them. Not that I need the extra experience points, but the money is nice.